Chapter 22

LEAH

The figure at the door didn’t move. He stood in the shadowed hallway like he belonged there, like he had always been there, just waiting for the right moment. My breath caught in my throat, and my heart thudded so loud it drowned out every other sound.

But then the light from a flickering torch splayed across his face, and the world tipped sideways.

I knew that face.

I remembered the curve of his smile, the soft gruffness of his voice when he read to me by firelight, the way he always smelled faintly of mint leaves and soot. I remembered the way he’d tucked my hair behind my ear when I was small, whispering, “You’re not meant to be ordinary, little moon.”

“Elias?” I whispered, but it came out strangled.

He didn’t respond. His eyes once the warm hazel I used to trust were now a strange, unnatural shade of gray. Clouded, soulless, as if something else was using his body like a mask. His skin looked withered in places, like whatever magic clung to him had leeched the life from within.

“You should not have come here, Leah,” he rasped.

I blinked, not sure if I’d heard him right. “You died. I… I was told you died. In the fire. At Black Hollow.” None of this was making sense, but he was here in the middle of a battle.

His head tilted slightly. “That’s what they wanted you to believe.”

I took a cautious step back, the cold air biting at my bare arms. Everything in me screamed to run, but something deeper, older, rooted me to the ground. My knees wanted to buckle, but I couldn’t let them. Not now.

“I don’t understand. What happened to you? Why are you here?”

Elias, if he even was Elias anymore smiled, but it wasn’t kind. It was stretched too wide, too forced. Like a puppet remembering how to be human.

“They tried to burn away the truth, little moon. But truth has teeth. And blood like yours… it calls.”

I shivered. His voice sounded like a hundred whispers layered over one another. I didn’t know what he meant, but my instincts told me whatever had once been Elias was only part of what stood before me.

“You were supposed to protect me,” I whispered.

His expression twitched. “And I did. For as long as I could. But protection comes with a price, and the price was me. The things I saw, they broke me. Reforged me.”

Dark veins pulsed under his skin, spreading like roots across his jaw, his neck, down to where his cloak hung tattered. The smell hit me then rotting earth and burnt sage.

Dark magic. I took a step backwards while swallowing deeply. I had met Elias in the forest when I was really young, I didn't know where my parents were but even if we were both kids he took me to his house.

His parents had died, and he was five years older than me. He promised he will protect me at all cost until I couldn't find anymore, he suddenly disappeared.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

He took a single step forward, and it took everything in me not to stumble back.

“I came to warn you,” he said. “Before they do. Before the others find you.”

My throat dried instantly. “Others?”

“There are old things, Leah. Buried beneath your name. Your power stirs them. The curse was never meant to end. It was bound. Shackled. But now you’re waking it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You will,” he whispered. “Soon.”

His hand lifted slowly, and for a second, I thought he might reach for me, reassure me like he used to. But then I saw the black mist crawling across his fingertips, and I knew something was terribly wrong.

“You need to run,” he growled. “You’re not ready for what you are.”

The shadows around him thickened. They surged forward like claws, and I barely dodged in time as the floor cracked where I’d stood. I stumbled, breath caught in my chest.

Elias wasn’t warning me.

He was testing me.

“Elias, please!” I cried out, backing into the wall as the hallway darkened around us. “Don’t do this!”

But the thing wearing his face wasn’t listening.

He moved fast, faster than he ever could have in life. Shadows exploded outward, chasing me like hungry wolves. I turned and ran, bare feet slapping against cold stone, my breath ragged in my throat.

Down one corridor. Then another. Twisting, spinning, turning. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I needed to survive.

And then, like a flash of silver and fire, Dante was there.

He burst through the side hallway like a storm, teeth bared, eyes glowing, I’d come to recognize as his fury incarnate. His sword gleamed as it sliced through the thick mist, cutting through the shadows that had been reaching for me.

“Behind me!” he barked.

I didn’t think. I just obeyed.

Elias let out a scream, not human, not wolf. Something in between. Something monstrous.

Dante stepped forward, sword raised, and for a moment, the two of them just stared at each other two predators caught in a standoff of power and old grudges. The air shimmered with pressure.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Dante snarled.

Elias laughed. “Neither should she.”

And then the shadows burst outward again. Dante grabbed me by the arm and pulled me behind him just in time as a spear of darkness crashed into the wall beside us. I coughed, eyes stinging.

More guards rushed in. Kiara. Eliana. A few others.

But the shadows swallowed Elias whole before anyone could touch him.

Gone. Just like that.

No warning. No scream. Just vanished into thin air.

The silence afterward was thunderous.

My heart beat so hard I could barely stand. I collapsed to my knees, shaking, barely registering the hands trying to help me up.

“What the hell just happened?” Kiara demanded, but I couldn’t answer.

My mind was still spinning. Elias was alive. Or… had been. Or maybe he was something else now. Whatever he’d become, it wasn’t natural. It wasn’t safe.

But worst of all… he knew something. Something important. Something about me.

Dante crouched beside me. His hand hovered near my shoulder, unsure if he should touch me.

“You know him?” he asked quietly.

“I did,” I whispered. “Once.”

He didn’t push for more. Just gave me a small nod, his eyes hard with quiet understanding. That worsened it. I didn’t want to be understood. I wanted to scream, to cry, to go back and shake Elias for disappearing when I needed him most.

Instead, I swallowed it all.

Later, after the others left, Dante and I stood alone in the Moon Room. The fire burned low in the hearth, casting shadows that felt too familiar now.

“You shouldn’t have come looking for the truth alone,” he said.

I rounded on him, fury bubbling just beneath my skin. “Don’t you dare lecture me. I’ve had nothing but lies since the moment I got here.”

“I’ve only tried to protect you.”

“By hiding what I am?”

His jaw clenched. “By keeping you alive.”

We stood there, staring at each other across a widening chasm neither of us could cross. And maybe we weren’t meant to. Maybe there were too many secrets, too many wounds between us.

It was one problem after the other, and I was always in the middle of it all for a reason that's very unknown to me, at this point I wanted to go back to my life of pain with Darren

I shook my head unable to handle things anymore

I didn’t want to talk anymore. I wanted answers. I wanted truth.

“You said the curse needed to be broken,” I said. “But what if I’m not supposed to break it? What if I’m the reason it exists in the first place?”

Dante’s eyes widened slightly. “That’s not—”

“I need to know who I am, Dante. Because Elias… or whatever he is now… he looked at me like I’m some kind of weapon.”

He didn’t argue.

He couldn’t.

Because we both knew he was thinking the same thing.

That night, sleep didn’t come. My mind kept replaying Elias’s face, his voice, that final whisper before he vanished.

“Your blood will awaken them all.”

What did it mean?

Who were they?

And why did my blood, the thing I’d never thought twice about, suddenly feel like a curse?

I didn’t have answers. Only more questions. And a gnawing fear in my chest that whatever was coming…

…it had already started.